Souvenirs of Starling Falls

“Yep,” said Tom, taking another sip of his beer.

“A person can write anywhere, yet here you are,” Barnaby continued. “And Courtney—it’s Courtney, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You don’t work? I mean, outside the home?” Now Barnaby was nodding encouragingly at me.

“Well,” I began, unsure what my new life would look like once we’d settled in.

“You stay home and take care of things around here, right?” Barnaby continued, still nodding.

“I guess so. I mean, that’s true for now,” I said. Until a month earlier, I’d been a manager at a pet store. One of those chain pet stores that’s part of a strip mall. But I didn’t mention this. Despite that I barely knew the ways of Starling Falls, I sensed that this unremarkable, unimpressive fact could serve no purpose. Not only was I too exhausted to talk about myself, but I couldn’t ignore my new neighbor’s eager, bobbing head, pointing me to the merits of being a stay-at-home wife. “Yeah, I don’t work,” I decided aloud, wanting to be agreeable and easy.

“And why would you, when Tom’s a successful writer?” asked Barnaby.

“Exactly,” I said. I glanced at Tom, who I usually knew so well, but I couldn’t decipher whether he was flattered by the conversation or thought it was stupid and annoying. Priscilla just kept smiling a very, very pleased smile.

“The whole wide world is your oyster,” Barnaby continued, looking from Tom to me and back to Tom again. “But you’ve chosen to be here. Right here! In Starling Falls! How great is that? You’re taking part in the Starling Falls renaissance. That’s what I call it! Flipping the soil, planting the seeds! Folks are moving in, investing in the town. We’re going to turn this town around. Together!”

“Yeah, we really like it here,” said Tom. “We were looking for a place to settle down, and Courtney loves these big, old houses, and this one was such a steal... We decided to go for it.”

“It really is a mansion, isn’t it?” said Priscilla.

“The houses on this whole street are,” I said. “Well, practically all the houses in the whole town are.” I suppose I didn’t want to seem gluttonous, so I was pointing out that lots of people had a bigger house than they needed.

“Are you gonna fix it up yourself or hire someone?” Barnaby asked Tom.

“A little of both,” said Tom. “Which one’s yours?”

“That one.” Barnaby pointed across the street

and down a little to a huge pink house with an octagonal turret. “We’re getting it painted this fall. A nice slate gray is what we’re thinking. Bring a little Nantucket style to Idaho.”

“Or yellow,” said Priscilla. “Butter yellow with slate gray shutters. Functional shutters, of course. The kind that actually open and close. Not that we would want them closed, but it’s nice to be historically accurate.”

“It’s a beauty,” said Tom. “Edwardian?”

“Queen Anne,” said Barnaby.

“I love the fence,” I said, referring to an iron fence with ornate scrollwork that bordered the side of their lawn facing Virginia Street. “Is it original?”

“Absolutely,” said Barnaby.

“How do you like the pie?” asked Priscilla. Her posture was immaculate. Her head was tilted just so, revealing a simple pearl earring and a small mole on her neck. Her ankles were crossed with each long, white foot pointing primly off to the side like parallel hotdog buns.

Hot dog buns? This is when it occurred to me just how exhausted I was. I had a fleeting thought that we’d been drugged, but then decided I was too tired to care if we had been.

“The pie? It’s nice,” I said, smiling at the remaining half of my slice. It was a shell now. A golden shell in a puddle of sweet inedible doom.

“Really?” she asked. Implored. Leaning in, waiting, inhaling, her eyes growing bigger and more pleading with each passing millisecond. She was energy restrained, yet in such a quiet, well-behaved way that no one else was penetrated by it. Barnaby cleaned his glasses with the corner of his shirt and Tom chugged his beer, neither of them seeming to feel or notice her quivering electrical essence.

“Mmm hmm,” I said.

She exhaled. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll make it for you again.”

“I’m having another beer. Anyone else need another?” asked Tom, reaching behind a pile of garden hoses and storage totes to where the cooler was sitting. The two he’d opened earlier for Priscilla and Barnaby were still sitting on the table. Barnaby’s was almost gone but Priscilla’s looked nearly untouched.

“I’d offer you coffee to go with the pie, but it’s not unpacked,” I said. Who would want coffee on a hot summer night? Something told me these people would.